We finally had a good old winter storm.  It had to come. We knew that. Doesn’t mean we have to like it…

The first real snow like this has a bit of magic.  It also informs you that winter is here. Really here.  Get used to it.  So, we have no choice, but to accept that the earth is asleep for the next couple months. On the bright side, no pun intended, the days will start being brighter, lighter, longer, in a few weeks.  All hail the Holly King.

Make the most of the Yule season, my friends.  It comes but once a year…

While listening to the irishfireside podcast, I heard the author interviewed. What a great blog. Thought you may enjoy it!

I married an irish farmer…

“Tis’ Different”.

Hi

So, last Saturday was the monthly bluegrass jam in Poplar Grove.  Not a bad day, all in all. We’ve all played better, and worse. Just an even kinda day.  As we got there, and found a table to have lunch at, and to put our stuff, I saw a couple behind us. They were in the process of ordering off the menu. So, always being the chatty type, I offered some choices to eat.  We talked for a second, then each on to their day in The Grove. Us playing, them, hopefully, enjoying.  We played an hour or so later, then had lunch, and listened to the music too.  We left around 4, and the couple were still there. End of the day at the jam for us.

Flash to the grocery store the next morning… That would be Sunday…  I am picking up some items as Maggie is off somewhere else, getting the things on her part of the list.  A couple comes up to me, and asks if I was at the jam yesterday. Yup, it was the couple behind us, the day before. This time we had a chance to talk for a minute. Turns out, that they had never been to the jam before, and absolutely loved it. The woman was originally from the middle of Ireland, and, the jam totally reminded her of home. Going to the pubs for music and socializing is a big part of Irish life, and she told me that it really was such a touch of home that she had to tell me.  Her brother lives in the USA now too, in the area, and she was going to tell him about it, so he can enjoy the live music. We talked for a couple minutes, about Ireland, live music, and some of this & that.

So… you never know how what you do affects people.  You may think that something doesn’t have repercussions, good or bad, but it does. Hopefully, like this, it’s for the good.  I’m glad she loved the music, and, that she will come back to the jam.

We have Verizon for our cells. Been with them for over 4 yrs now.  In the last week, I have had 3 calls not make it to me, and, the voice mails arrive 10-12 hours later. NOT ACCEPTABLE in this day and age. Plus, we are in an area that isn’t overloaded, like San Francisco, or New York.  The last time this happened, was right after my wife had a heart attack, so, receiving calls was kinda important, you know… Turns out, that during that time, they were updating the system to 3G, so, maybe, this means that 4G is a’comin…

If not, then maybe ATT is looking better here. I am not going to accept missed calls… There is no excuse in the midwest…

Hi
last night, (Saturday) we took my sister in law, who is in town from the big city, to a hip local restaurant. Called Brio, it’s one of the best places we have to show off, food wise… It’s a ’small plate/tapas’ style establishment, with a great staff.

We each ordered something different from each other… We started with hen of the woods mushrooms on pasta, olive oil, and garlic. A lot of garlic. I had never had that species of mushroom before, but, I will have them again! Mary had in chili sauce. She loved them. Maggie and I don’t like scallops. Yuck… Maggie had a asparagus tempura. The girls loved it. I don’t like asparagus either… Yeah, I know, what a picky eater…
Next, we had spicy asian noodles, but not too spicy. Fresh beans, mushrooms and onions chopped into it. Mmmm mm. Maggie had chicken lemon crepes with a nice reduction on it…. Mary skipped this round… We did share with her… A little.

The last course was a great mini ribs on a chipotle corn cake for me. The girls decided to skip this round, I should have, ‘cuz I was already stuffed, but, they are sooooo good! By the way, these are not ‘full’ plate meals, sort of half size…

For dessert, Mary a blueberry bread pudding. Talk about tasty/sweet. I had the ever popular, traditional creme brulee’. We did share with Maggie, but she was the sensible one, and decided not to order any more…. I did push the sweet meter over the top by ordering a ginger ale. Huh, what you say? A Canada Dry to go with this? Nope… Brio makes their own ginger ale. Not too sweet, but what a bite. Mmm mm.
We stayed for over 2 and a half hours, sipping wine, coffee, and talking about everything under the moon, since it was dark out. Our waiter, Dan, has served us before, and is a great guy, along with being a wonderful waiter. He and his partner had gone to France since the last time we were in, so there were stories to tell and hear.
Mary had a great time! Said it was every bit as good as anything in NYC that she has visited. Cool! Next time, we’ll try somewhere she hasn’t been to.
If you are close to Rockford, and want a really nice dining experience, try Brio. I know, sounds like a Yelp review, but it is a nice place!
Thanks for reading my rambling….

Here’s what we did on Halloween

For some reason that seems to be greed and stupidity, our govt. is in Seoul now, working in closed session, ‘for national security’ (movies, music, disney, and royalties are national security?) to totally snafu the copyright laws, and the way you can end up being permanently booted from the internet w/out proper legal process. That’s what  the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement is ALL ABOUT.
Here are two links to stories from the  EFF and BoingBoing about it. Read and contact your congress/senator…

Another week passes…

Went to a pumkin/halloween party on Sat @ Claudia’s and Al’s. A great time was had by all!

a party where a good time was had by all!

It rained, it was damp, it rained, it was hot, humid and more humid. Did we have fun. Of course we did.
See picture of the afore blogged tent. When we arrived at Willow on Friday afternoon it had been raining for about 5 hours. Real rain, not that pretend rain.
You can see the motor home of friend Mike in front of our car.
We had a lovely compound set up, and even though the weather was damp we did some jamming Friday evening and enjoyed just sitting in a cow pasture.

Yeah, it was that muddy

The “road” down the middle of the camp area was well chewed up by the time we arrived
due to the heavy rain & we all had our fingers crossed that come Sunday we would be able to get out.

Haute cuisine

Nothing like the fine eating experiences you have while camping.

Really it works best to keep food to a minimum for us. I’m not big into cooking and cleaning up while camping. So we prepared most of our food before hand and just heated it up. We did eat more than hot dogs. Note: these are 97% fat free weiners. Even while camping you have to do your best to eat healthy.

Ground zero for us
That’s Art’s Air Stream trailer, our tent and Mike’s motor home.

The compound as we referred to it. If you’d heard the weather we had you wonder if it’s worth being out there. Saturday morning it started to rain about 3 and rained another 5 hours. We hung out in the compound and gave each other grief till the sun came out and we went over to sign up for a time slot to perform.

Tim in the tent

Tim called this a hobbit door on the tent. Yes it really did have a door. And note the lovely rug in front of the door. That’s the rug I crocheted with plastic bags. It worked out great. Think I’ll make an even bigger one for next year.

We did our gig on the stage, and I was surprised at the all round turn out. We had fun, and that’s the big thing. Well that and entertaining the audience. After all it is a fund raiser for the church.

After all the joking I’ve done about the incredibly big tent I have to say I was very happy we had that one. Yes, it was really waterproof. Just 1 or 2 drops of water on Saturday.

Did get a chance to hang up my

curtains on Saturday. Nice for shade and just a lovely all round accent for the campsite.

We packed up and left this morning so we could get home and unpack the carload of stinky clothes and smoke permeated stuff and catch up on some sleep before going back to work tomorrow.
You really need earplugs if you want to sleep at this festival. It’s not the drum circles. I enjoyed that. It’s the fact that some campsites do not go to sleep till dawn.

After people have been enjoying an evening of “good times” they are not using indoor voices even though it’s 3 in the morning. Alas, not everyone comes to Willow to enjoy playing & enjoying music. Some people pay no attention to the music at all. To each his own.

It’s these sorts of events that keep us going in the dead of winter. I know in January I’ll think of how the music flowed in the lantern lit campgrounds. How we laughed and shared stories. All the memories of rain, mud and humidity will fade and I’ll start making plans and going through the song books looking for good songs to share and thinking how I can improve the campsite decorations.
Farewell to Willow Folk Festival of 2009. Hope to see you again next year.